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Enska Sm

Internet Weekly Report – Issue 23 – May 20, 2002

Sites

Humor and News

Humor/Satire

PG = Adults over  17)

Parody Archive

Bert is Evil(PG)

Bob’s Fridge Door

Borowitz report.com

Bushism of the Day

Chickenhead

Capitol Steps

ComedyLab(PG)

Enron-ron-ron Song

Enron V-Mail System

Funny Times

Humor In The News

Ironic Times

Infinite Jest

Landover Baptist
(PG)

MadBlast

Mark Fiore

Onion(PG)


SatireWire

Three Stooges

Too Much Coffee Man

Valley of the Geeks

Whitehouse.org(PG)



Enska’s Home Page

Daily News

Ananova (UK)

BBC News (UK)

Boston Globe

CS Monitor

Guardian (UK)

Los Angeles Times

New York Times

NPR

Times (UK)

Washington Post

Washington Times

Weblogs/Links

Blogdex

Google News

Google Zeitgeist

Guardian Weblog (UK)

Lycos 50

Scout Report

Weekly Standard



The Week in Humor

  • Banner Ads We’d Like To See.  These parody banner ads from the Valley of the Geeks are really good.  If you liked those, there are even More Banner Ads to enjoy.

  • Ken Lay Slept Here:  The Enron Photo Album.  Check out and keep track of  Kenny Boy’s buds.

  • 100 Greatest Online Games. A procrastinator’s delight.  Be patient, because it takes a while to load.    Also, if you are interested in the history of computer games, you might find forty years of computer games interesting.  Remember Pong?

  • Mood Map.   A mood ring map?  It looks like no site is too silly for IWR!    Take for example the Art of Pen Spinning.  Need I say more?   Also, have you seen the Folding The $20 Bill 9/11 trick.  Snopes has more on this  in Post No Bills.  Finally, keeping with the this silly theme is the Why I love spam story.

NewsWeird


Snopes Rumors of the Week

  1. Brian Epstein and ‘My Bonnie’
  2. George Washington and the angel at Valley Forge
  3. Mexico and the Missing Cyanide



Animation of the Week

IWR is continuing to run the complete Edgar Beals A+++ series — Plickey and Muto.

Plickey + Muto: Shop 2 – Edgar Beals

Use The Farce – Mark Fiore


World’s First Self-Service Enema Machine

Dibley, OH — The world’s first self-service enema machine has been un-veiled by Dibley Bots, Inc.  According to the manufacturer, the ailing patient only needs to insert their credit card into the reader and then start the enema initialization process.  The first unit is expected to be installed in the local Dibley Wallgreen’s.

The Parody Newsline

MS Remedy To Cause Plagues

Valley of the Geeks (05/12/2002)

Statement by the President Regarding Democrat Jimmy Carter’s Conversion to Communism

Whitehouse.org (05/13/2002)

U.S. Protests Mexi-Canadian Overpass

The Onion (05/15/2002)

Area Man Criticizes Hazelnut Coffee, Volvos, New Mexico’s Flag In Two-Minute Span

The Onion (05/15/2002)

President Responds to Terror Report Furor: "Bill Clinton Was Also Warned". (PG)

Whitehouse.org (05/17/2002)

AL-QAEDA LIBERALS DEMAND "LIFE IN PRISON TO THE WEST"

SatireWire (05/18/2002


Political Humor

Photo Op-Portunism

Maureen Dowd, NY Times (05/15/2002)

Abs-Surdity – Can the ab-enhancing devices hawked on late-night TV give me a stomach of steel?

Eric Umansky, Slate (05/14/2002)

Sweet Schemes

Art Buchwald, Washington Post (05/14/2002)

Hypocritical hyperbole

Molly Ivins, WorkingforChange (05/16/2002)

Classin’ Up the Joint

Art Buchwald, Washington Post (05/16/2002)

The Case for the Empire

Jonathan V. Last, Weekly Standard (05/16/2002)


Salmagundi

Sites

Computing and Technology

Computing

CNET Tech. News

Computerworld

InternetNews.com

Newsbytes

Register (UK)

Silicon Valley

Snopes Netlore

Snopes Additions

Technology Review

Wired News

Business

Business Week

Business2.com

CBS MarketWatch

Financial Times (UK)

Forbes.com

Fortune

Red Herring



The Week in Computing

  • A Bad, Sad Hollywood Ending?  Business Week makes the case that Fritz Hollings rather than Bill Gates is a bigger enemy of the Open-source software movement.

  • Big Media Mergers Raise Big Doubts. Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post thinks that the recent media mergers like Time Warner-AOL are financial losers. 

  • ‘Experimental’ Online Ads Take On Obnoxious Tone.  Michael Bartlett of the soon to be axed Newsbytes (see story below) has a good rant about a topic dear to all surfers —   those annoying pop-up adds.  I think the ad that irked me most  personally was the Intel add that sucked all the memory out of my old Pentium Pro.  Now that’s dirty pool!

  • At MIT, they can put words in our mouths.  Interesting article by Gareth Cook on how advances in video technology at MIT can manipulate, in a very realistic way, the words a person is saying.  For example: MIT took a video of woman speaking English and changed it so she was singing convincingly in Japanese!

  • Book Reviews Find Homes on Web. Good Wired article on the transition of book reviews from the few to the many.

  • Freeservers.com Free Web Space.   I haven’t tried this service, but it may be a good way for the novice to start their own web page or blog.   Here is a good reference for creating your home page:  Top-10 Guidelines for Homepage Usability.  Remember there are free blog services that you can use.  I’ve only tried blogger, it is easy to use.  However, I would recommend that you spend some time checking out the alternatives.

  • Religion Finds Technology.  A good article on how Calvary Cathedral of Praise, a church in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, is using video and sound technology to enhance religious services.

  • Washington Post Co. to Shutter Newsbytes.  This is very bad news, and I hope the Washington Post reconsiders this decision.  Newsbytes is one the best computing news services on the Net.  It has more real news than any of its glossy competitors.  I hope the Post will realize what a mistake closing Newsbytes would be.   I sure will miss the daily update.  That’s where I find a lot of interesting links.  

  • Meatmarket.com.   Salon reviews the state of the art of online dating.  



The Politics of Computing

The Supreme Court And the Wild, Wild Web

Newsbytes (05/15/2002)

Senator [Lott] Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill

NY Times (05/17/2002)

Prisoners go to work for Dell

The Register (05/19/2002)


Bottom Line

Internet Mergers, Acquisitions Heat Up – Report

Newsbytes (05/14/2002)

Lindows judge throws the book at MS

The Register (05/16/2002)

Microsoft opts Passport holders into spam hell

The Register (05/17/2002)

Beware The ‘Internet Death Penalty’ – Study

Newsbytes (05/20/2002)


Security, Hacks and Patches

MS releases grand daughter of all IE security patches

The Register (05/16/2002)

Gummi bears defeat fingerprint sensors

The Register (05/16/2002)

‘Dork’ Duo Finally Get Noticed

Wired (05/16/2002)

Hoax tells people to nix Windows file

CNET (05/16/2002)

Windows Media Player Exposes IE Users To Attack

Newsbytes (05/16/2002)

MS IE patch misses the mark

The Register (05/17/2002)

Worm Infiltrates Kazaa File-Swapping Network

Newsbytes (05/20/2002)


Blogging in the Rain

WarLog: World War III: Proposal for The Weblog Foundation by Jeff Jarvis

Buzzmachine (05/?/2002)


The Week in Computing (Continued)

  • kd.  The IWR Blog of the Week by Karen.  A great alternative to all those ranting, bratty, gotcha, political blogs.

 

Sites

Science and Health

Science News

BBC Sci/Tech

CNN Sci/Tech

National Geographic

Nature News

New Scientist

NY Times: Science

Science Daily

Sky and Telescope



The Week in Science and Health
 

  • Study: Desks harbor more germs than toilet seats.  Does this mean that we will need to start using giant paper desk sheet covers before we set down at our desks in the morning?

  • Our Conscious Mind Could Be An Electromagnetic Field.  Interesting  new theory on how the brain and "consciousness" might work.

  • Housework won’t get you fit.  Perhaps, but it sure keeps the flies away.

  • Polar bears on the web.  Check out the how the Norwegian Polar Institute is tracking polar bears on the Net.

  • Researcher Analyzes the Meaning of Meows.  A Cornell researcher is out to prove what every cat owner already suspected — cats control the Universe!  Then again, sometimes a meow is just a meow.

  • Why Does School Own Clone Patent?  The University of Missouri holds a U.S. patent on human reproductive cloning.  Does John Ashcroft know about this?

  • American Experience: War Letters.  War Letters looks like another winner from the producers of the American Experience.  It should air on most PBS stations on Sunday May 26th at 9:00 PM.

  • When Backyards Were Laboratories. Interesting article on the decline in youthful science experimentation.  The article points out that half of the American public think dinosaurs and people existed at the same time!


Health

Freezing Cancer Cells Makes Them Prime Targets For Anti-Cancer Drug, New Study Finds

ScienceDaily Magazine (05/15/2002)

New drug tackles Alzheimer’s clumps

New Scientist (05/15/2002)

Love rats point to female sex drug

BBC News  (05/20/2002)


Psychology

Family History Of Hypertension Is Related To Maladaptive Behavioral Responses

ScienceDaily (05/14/2002)

Quick learners ‘may become big drinkers’

Ananova (05/15/2002)

Babies recognize monkey faces better than adults

Ananova (05/15/2002)



Astronomy and Space

Hubble’s ‘Pillars of Creation’ are fading

BBC News, (05/14/2002)

Spintronics

Scientific American (June 2002)

Odds on aliens

Philip Ball, Nature (05/15/2002)

Cosmic wrinkles smoothed

Philip Ball, Nature (05/16/2002)

Mercury meteorite puzzle

BBC News, (05/16/2002)

11 More New Moons for Jupiter

Sky and Telescope (05/16/2002)

Asteroid let dinosaurs rule

Nature (05/17/2002)

Gamma ray bursts tied to supernovae

New Scientist (05/17/2002

Probability of alien life rises

New Scientist (05/19/2002)

China sets date for the moon

BBC News, (05/20/2002)


Environment and Nature

Utility Buys Town It Choked, Lock, Stock and Blue Plume

NY Times (05/13/2002)

Rwanda battles gorilla poaching ring

BBC News (05/14/2002)

Honeybees in a Mite More Than Trouble

Washington Post (05/14/2002)

Hot on the Contrails of Weather

Wired (05/15/2002)

Climate change threatens polar bears

New Scientist (05/15/2002)

Crocodilians’ Hunting Secret Blue Freckles?

National Geographic (05/16/2002)

Flooding of Soviet uranium mines threatens millions

New Scientist (05/16/2002)

China plans record-breaking reforestation

New Scientist (05/16/2002)


Human Origins and History

India defense looks to ancient text

BBC News  (05/16/2002)

Unique Bronze Age archer unearthed

New Scientist (05/16/2002)

Some Language Experts Think Humans Spoke First With Gestures

NY Times (05/18/2002)

Sites

Politics and Commentary

Political  Commentary

(L = Left; R = Right)

AlterNet (L)


American Prospect
(L)

Cursor.org (L)

Mother Jones (L)

Nation (L)

National Review (R)

New Republic(LR)

OpinionJournal (R)

Slate (L)

Smirking Chimp (L)

Tompaine.com (L)

Town Hall (R)

Weekly Standard(R)

WorkingForChange (L)

Favorite Columnists

Art Buchwald

Maureen Dowd

Molly Ivins

Robert Novak

Robert Scheer

News Periodicals

Atlantic

New Yorker

Newsweek

TIME

USNEWS.com

 

The Weekly Rant

  • What Bush Knew Before Sept. 11 and Aug. Memo Focused On Attacks in U.S.  There was a lot of debate this week on what the Bush Administration knew about the al Qaeda threat before the 9/11 tragedy. There is also a concern of why this evidence was withheld for eight months. Minimally, it does seem to suggest a possible cover up.

    Bush’s statement that if he knew what was going to happen he would have protected America from that tragedy is a canard.  I don’t know anyone reasonable that has accused Dubya of knowing about Osama bin Laden’s plan.  However,  I don’t think ignorance is a good enough excuse for the Bush Administration, CIA and the FBI.  For example: Ashcroft learned of the FBI agent’s alert just after 9/11 (Bush Was Not Told), but why did the Administration sit on this information for so many months?  We need to know why they didn’t know and how we can prevent this sort of attack in the future.

    I think that Bush and his aides accusing Democrats of second-guessing or Ari Fleischer accusing the Democrats of resenting the President’s popularity as sounding petty and partisan.  This view is born out in Howard Fineman’s Newsweek article ‘I Sniff Some Politics’

    There has to be some accountability for the failure of our expensive security agencies and systems.   For example: the F.B.I. knew for years about terror pilot training and yet this information went nowhere.   Also, it looks like nobody in the Bush Administration, CIA or FBI read  The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism, a study prepared for the Library of Congress in 1999.

    William Kristol and Robert Kagan of the conservative Weekly Standard are calling for a blue-ribbon commission investigation into this matter.  This is a better solution when on considers the strife and dissent on the Hill’s Sept. 11 Panel

    We need to get to the bottom of what did and did not happened before 9/11.  Once we find out the facts, then we can improve our intelligence and security systems to prevent this type of tragedy from recurring in the future.

  • Guns and Butter: Just call him Lyndon Baines Bush and Dubya’s New Deal.   I can’t imagine that a fellow conservative calling Dubya LBJ is good sign.   Even that conservative tart, Peggy Noonan, is comparing Bush to FDR!  😉  Since when has FDR been a conservative icon?


Mideast

Exploding Myths – Why Israel’s war on terrorism is working.

Jonathan Chait, Slate (05/13/2002)

Christians hit theological rift on Mideast policy

G. Jeffrey MacDonald, CS Monitor (05/14/2002)

Palestinians Want Reform–But on Own Terms

MARY CURTIUS, LA Times (05/14/2002)

Why does John Malkovich want to kill me?

Robert Fisk, Independent (05/14/2002)

US media: whose side are they on?

Brendan O’Neill, Spiked (05/14/2002)

Nine Wars Too Many

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times (05/15/2002)

Dr. Sharon and Mister Hyde Article

Gideon Samet, Ha’aretz (05/15/2002)

Ariel Sharon demonstrates how to look like you’re saying yes when you’re really saying no.

William Saletan, Slate (05/16/2002)

Is Arafat Capable of Peace?

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, NY Times (05/17/2002)



Commentary of the Week

AlterNet — Tom DeLay’s Axis of Influence

Stephen Pizzo, AlterNet (05/10/2002)

Foul Ball: How a communist dictatorship and a U.S. embargo has silenced a Cuban historian.

Matt Welch, Reason (June 2002 Issue)

No [Atta and Iraq] meeting in Prague

Robert Novak, TownHall (05/13/2002)

Iraqi sanctions

Economist.com (05/15/2002)

Don’t Know Much About …

Editorial, CSMonitor (05/16/2002)

Journey to Havana

Editorial, NY Times (05/16/2002)

Give Carter His Due: In Cuba, the former president strikes a blow for freedom.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, OpinionJournal (05/16/2002)

GIs Battle ‘Ghosts’ in Afghanistan

Peter Baker, Washington Post (05/16/2002)

Abstinence Or Obstinacy?

Richard Cohen, Washington Post (05/17/2002)

US media cowed by patriotic fever, says CBS star

Matthew Engel, Guardian (05/17/2002)

Dicing with Armageddon: India and Pakistan

Economist.com (05/17/2002)

Pushing the Limit

Editorial, NY Times (05/19/2002)

Capitalism’s Hollow Core

Editorial, Washington Post (05/19/2002)


Bush Administration

Reversing Course, Bush Signs Bill Raising Farm Subsidies

DAVID E. SANGER, NY Times (05/14/2002)

Cringe for Mr. Bush

Editorial, Washington Post (05/14/2002)

No-Frills Arms Control

Editorial, NY Times (05/14/2002)

Base Politics

E. J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post (05/14/2002)

Lights Out on Bush’s Excuses

Robert Scheer, LA Times (05/14/2002)

White House eyes new nuclear arms

Bryan Bender, Boston Globe (05/14/2002)

GOP Takes In $33 Million At Fundraiser

Mike Allen, Washington Post (05/15/2002)

George Bush? He’s nice but dim, says crown prince

Matthew Engel,  Guardian (05/15/2002)

Bush Was Told of Hijacking Dangers

Dan Eggen and Bill Miller, Washington Post (05/16/2002)

Pipeline Dream

William Rivers Pitt, WorkingForChange (05/16/2002)

Failing Intelligence – Why didn’t the CIA warn Bush properly?

Scott Shuger, Slate (05/17/2002)

Bush is still running from 9/11

Joan Walsh, Salon (05/18/2002)

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